Buzzard Mountain Blog

My buddy Tim from the band Shred Kelly sent me this video of his band and him playing the custom banjo I built for him.




Thanks Tim!

I have updated my main site with some recent builds. There are 2 new banjos to view over at Latest Builds Page I've also added some videos and sound files to some of the older builds so check those out as well.

#10023






#10024

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to repair a 1930's era Vegaphone for a gentleman from South Carolina. The banjo needed a neck reset as the action was way too high. The owner plays Scruggs 3-finger style banjo and wanted a fairly low action. After removing the dowel stick, I plugged the existing hole with a hardwood dowel, re-drilled a new hole at the proper angle, rested the dowel and reworked the heel angle. After getting it all back together it set-up perfectly with a 5/8" bridge and is probably one of the sweetest sounding banjos that I have ever had the pleasure to play.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of the banjo prior to completing my work, but I did manage to take a few shots with my phone before the owner picked it up.

Sorry to all the folks that follow my blog, I have been a bit lazy lately in keeping up with the news and happings here at Buzzard Mountain.

I wanted to take a moment and share one of my latest projects. A little while ago I got a Somerset S1 sent to me for repairs and a few upgrades. As some of you may know I worked with the Somerset team for awhile and help to build and design their banjos, I no longer work directly with the Somerset Company but I am always happy to help a customer out when in need. On the S1's I primarily made rough neck blanks and turned a few rims, then sent the parts off to another builder to finish them up.

This particular S1 had a few issues that needed to be addressed. The fingerboard was not securely glued and was starting to de-laminate, the neck angle was just a hair off from side to side, the nut was a bit too high and the finish was worn off on the back of the neck and rim. In addition to fixing those things the owner also wanted some upgrades. So I installed a new fretboard with a frailing scoop, did a new custom headstock inlay, added MOP side dots, did a heel cap inlay, added wood binding to the rim and refinished the whole banjo with a Hard Oil finish. I also thinned the neck profile to my standard size as the original was left a little thick.

Here are a few images of the finished banjo:
Front view showing the new fingerboard and MOP headstock inlay of a Celtic Trinity.


Back View shows the refinished neck and rim, and an Abalone Shamrock inlay in the heel cap.


A closer look at the heel cap.


A side view of the rim with wood binding added and re-finished.


A closer look at the headstock.


All and all, this banjo turned out looking great and it plays great too.

Well I'm back from my adventures at Clifftop 2010, I had a really great time. I met a lot of great people, saw some old friends and had more then a few great jam sessions. I had a ton of people stop by my booth and admire my banjos and pick a bit, it was truly a great time.

Here are a couple of pics of my booth set up, with some fellers hanging around playing some.








Here's a video of Jimmy Costa playing Old Mother Flanagan on my Chestnut banjo.


I've also spent some time these last couple of weeks updating my website, trying to make it easier to navigate and too get all my latest builds shown with plenty of images and sound files. I still have a little bit of work to to do, but I think its much better then it was before!

Take care everyone.

I'll be leaving for Clifftop (Appalachian String band Festival) in WV in a couple of days. I decided to have a booth this year to show and sell some banjos. I just finished up the last one yesterday and got some pictures of them all taken today. So I thought I would post some of the pictures and give a brief description on each. If your coming to Clifftop, make sure to stop by and say hello!

#10018
12" Block Cherry Rim with Bubinga Tone Ring
Cherry Neck with black stripe and German Silver Plate up to the 7th fret and at the scoop.




#10019
12" Curly Maple Rim with Walnut Cap and Whyte Laydie Tone Ring
Curly Maple Neck with Walnut Stripe




#10020
11" Block Cherry Rim with Ebony Cap, Hond. Roswood Tone Ring and aged Brass Hardware
Cherry Neck with Black Stripe




#10021
11" Curly Maple Rim with Bloodwood Cap and Bloodwood tonering with Rolled Brass Rod
Curly Maple Neck with Red Stripe




#10022
11" 100+ Year Old Chestnut Block Rim with Ebony Cap, Hond. Rosewood Tone Ring and Aged Brass Hardware
Birds Eye Maple neck with black Stripe




I'll post some more pics and some sound files when I get back.

It's been awhile since I have updated my blog, I've been real busy this summer building banjos and doing repairs. Earlier this spring I finished up a custom long neck banjo for my buddy Kelly in Chicago and I am just getting around to posting some pictures of it.

It's a long neck open back with a maple neck and rim that features an ebony rim cap and heel cap, ebony fingerboard and headstock overlay, Nickel Silver Inlay and a mastertone style tone ring. I hand delivered this to Kelly at the Henry Reed Fiddlers Convention and he was in love at first site.









Kelly's going to be posting some more videos at his site, so head over to BanjoMania to see and hear this beast in action.

Once again it's been awhile since I've updated my blog, but things have been real busy this spring. I thought I would take a min. to share a recent repair job I finished. I guy that comes to a local jam session I attend, had broken his Mandolin head a few weeks ago. He took it to another repair shop and thought it was fixed, until he was playing it at the jam and it snapped again. He thought because it had been repaired before and re-broke that it was a lost cause. I looked at it and said, "I can fix it".

Here is what it looked like when it came to me:






Yikes!

This is after I disassembled it:



The break wasn't very clean and I had to scrape off the old glue from the previous repair and do my best to get a tight fit to re-glue it. After re-gluing the break, I decided that to make sure this thing would hold I needed to install a hardwood spline through the break to reinforce it. So I routed out a channel and installed a Hard Maple spline.



After sanding the surfaces and cleaning them up this is what I had:


Everything looked good so I proceeded to do the re-finish process, which consisted of staining the wood, spraying a couple wash coats of lacquer, a few coats of Translucent Black colored lacquer, and then a few finish coats of lacquer with a slight bit of vintage amber to match the color of the old lacquer. After all those coats and sanding in between them all it took was a final polish and the repaired area matched the old finish perfectly.



I strung it up and she played as well as she ever did.



I love the challenge of repairing instruments like this, it's very satisfying to have something that is broken and too return it too a playable state.

It's been awhile since I have updated the blog, I've been real busy around the shop this winter doing repairs and building new banjos. I thought I would take a minute to share one of my recent repair jobs. I got in this 1880's Dobson Victor Concert banjo that a customer had bought. It needed a bit of work to make it playable again. Somewhere in the past the headstock had broken and been re-glued rather poorly, but it was stable. It needed a new nut, some touch up to the previous repair work and the first 3 frets changed. Here are a few pictures of the original.









After replacing the frets, making a new nut, and cleaning up the old repair I strung it up and realized that the neck had pulled forward so much that the strings where about 5/8" high at the 12th fret. The action was way too high to make it playable. The solution I came up with was to make an adjustable bracket for the dowel stick to be able to lower the action with only modifying the original neck/dowel slightly. The owner didn't want to spend a lot of money and I generally prefer to modify these old instruments as little as possible, so the bracket worked out great. Here is how it turned out strung up with Nygut strings and a new bridge.





Here you can see the bracket I manufactured out of brass.



This banjo turned out great and it plays great too, the original skin head with the Nygut strings gives it a nice warm tone.

Here is a recent build from my shop, it is a customized version of the "Road Kill" budget model. The owner of this one wanted a full length 5th string which required a custom Minstrel style headstock to accommodate the added tunning peg. It features the Bubinga wood tone ring and rim cap, Dobson style heel and rosewood fretboard and overlay.











I love it when a customer challenges me to build something new! Although the concept for a long 5th has been around for a very long time, it's certainly something you don't see often these days.